Several months ago former Chief Executive Officer Stephen Gregg -- himself joining the company four years about without a theme park industry background -- announced he was stepping down from his full-time role with the company. His predecessor Tony Braxton-Smith also came from a non-theme park hospitality background.

His replacement, Noel Dempsey joined Macquarie Leisure Trust Group -- a company which owns a host of quasi-leisure ventures, from marinas to fitness centres -- 12 months ago as Chief Operating Officer after coming from Restaurant Brands, a New Zealand restaurant chain which owned 211 properties. After 12 months overseeing the company -- noting that Dreamworld, the biggest money maker in the portfolio is largely self-managed -- he steps into the CEO position at Dreamworld.

Reports in recent months also suggested that the park's former General Manager / Chief Operating Officer position was removed.

Theme parks around the world usually fill their top positions with either internal promotions or hire from other parks, often without concern for geographical location, so as to ensure management is well-versed in the highly specialised and unique world of theme parks.

When Warner Village Theme Parks, Dreamworld & WhiteWater World's competition had an opening for their Chief Operating Officer position they  brought on board Tim Fisher, a former Paramount Parks executive who had decades of experience in the theme park industry and years in Australia running the then-successful Australia's Wonderland.

The official announcement for Dempsey's appointment has Macquarie Leisure Trust licking its fingers, suggesting: "[his] detailed operational experience will assist the management team in ensuring that Dreamworld maximises its operating performance in the current economic environment."

Comments

Posted by Gazza at 7:33pm, 9 Dec 08

Come on guys, we need some more KFC jokes, hopefully better than these...

-"Noel Demp-sey, I like it like that"
-His contract had 11 secret terms and conditions.
-Big 6 ride variety bucket.
-They may have an outstanding saftey record, but how do you know if its fresh, not frozen?

Posted by Gold Coaster at 11:40pm, 9 Dec 08

This appointment leaves a fowl taste in my mouth, but let's not count our chickens before they're hatched. Maybe he'll put in a cool slide like Wet'n'Wild's Twister but we're guaranteed a grande experience now he's a pizza the action.

*dodges hail of tomatoes and flees*

Posted by Gold Coaster at 11:41pm, 9 Dec 08

... well, someone had to get the bad jokes out of the way. Who better than me?

I'll come up with something funny soon though.

Posted by Lotl_90 at 11:49pm, 9 Dec 08

Noel is actually a really lovely gent from what i can gather. Im really quite interested to see what direction he takes the parks in. As ive said previously, A nice step up would be really helpful about now.

Posted by Richard at 9:20am, 10 Dec 08

Chicken jokes and his niceness aside, this move typifies the sort of management and vision we have come to expect from Macquarie Leisure. Now granted it's too early to make any real judgement, but the fact is you don't hire someone with this skillset to grow Dreamworld into a world-class theme park.

You look at the management team at any theme park in the world -- even smaller ones -- and you will find that they come either from within the park or from other parks. This indicates that the skillset needed to manage theme parks is highly specialised. The fact that Dreamworld has continued to completely dillute their product over recent years through brand affiliations, cutbacks in quality and short-term vision when it comes to new major attractions, suggests that there is no interest at all for them to run Dreamworld the same way as almost every other successful theme park out there. An appointment like this only strengthens this argument.

The question also needs to be asked; why does the park have such a high turnover rate? How can any level of long term growth be achieved with CEOs staying onboard for only a few years before moving on. Whether it's a sign of the kind of environment that exists, or just purely coincidental that all of the park's CEOs have had such a short run I don't know but it is very interesting to me.